


What's left of the world isnt ours

by the_authors_exploits



Series: AJ's AUs [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe-Aliens, Angst, Drama, Gen, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Romance, listen it's not a fic with Jason in it if he doesnt die at least once ok? ok, me attempting to get back into jaytim hell because they're precious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11917866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: but maybe we'll make it home





	What's left of the world isnt ours

The layer of dust and grime on the ground is so thick Thim leaves footprints wherever he steps; there’s a building he has his eyes on, faded graffiti across the chipped and worn paint, and he knows this place holds food. There are little carry tubs on wheels scattered around with gutted metal frames that used to be called _cars_.

They used to run, like the ships the _Ravians_ travel on, carting their users to and from places; so similar the universe is to each other. To itself.

Thim pushes the doors aside; he is strong, stronger than these humans, stronger than the unworkable doors. So he pushes, and they grind open, and he steps into the darkness; lights don’t work, except flame, but these humans were advanced past fire. They had a condensed form of power, electricity, something similar to the karby crystals the _Ravians_ used to power their homes, their ships, their society.

But Thim is not here to research how the people lived; he is here for provisions, so he glances about slowly for any traps left behind. The humans had been resourceful, stubborn, and their legacy is death. With no threat in sight, Thim takes steady strides—large ones—towards one side. He can see well in the dark, and he strolls through the dusty and abandoned shopping center; a can of beans catches his eye, and he plucks it, dusts it, tucks it in his pack. He moves further through the store, pass flies buzzing over moldy cheese, pass rotten meat untouched by scavengers.

He gathers some more items, more canned food or bags of sweets that are still edible, paper towels, cleaning agents, medications and bandages. His pack full, he returns to the front of the store and exits as quietly as he came; he follows his footprints through the grime on the road, back down the way he’d come, and he eyes a dog feasting in an alleyway. He marches on, head down.

Back to the beach, receded water providing a large stretch of rocky land for Thim’s base, Thim enters the forcefield; it causes a shiver of electricity to run down his spine, a trickle of something warm. It’s a familiar energy, not just proof of the forcefield’s power but a testing of if he’s an intruder or not. Satisfied that Thim is indeed a welcome comer, the forcefield warps back to a glass like blue, barely visible, a translucent dome of protection.

Thim goes for the box structure, white metal stark against the rocky beach, as tall as five humans, and presses his elongated fingers to the smooth exterior; it hums, strings of red energy crawling over the metal, and with a soft rumble through the air the structure melts open. The hole is so large it leaves barely any solid to the front of the structure, yet there’s a light so strong nothing can be seen from the inside.

Thim steps in; behind him, the structure folds back into place and around him the cube twists and turns and flutters into a room. A place with soft blue walls, darker blue drawers and compartments built in the wall, a living quarters of such; a rounded table and bench take up most of the place, along with cooking appliances and other comfortable seating.

Thim goes about organizing his loot in the different compartments; cans of fruit go in one place, can of vegetables and canned meat in another. Bread, full of what was considered mold, is settled in another compartment, and Thim opens a bottle of green kale juice, downs it readily as he continues working.

He settles his other findings in their proper place, and when that’s done he returns outside; the sky is roiling with darkening clouds, and Thim lifts his large blue eyes to assess the oncoming storm. He’ll need to prepare, so he first goes to the karby crystal; it’s encased in a glass case, humming like a breath machine as air is purified before being pumped in and then out. The crystal, a soft pink color, pulses with the air’s movements, and Thim touches his fingertips to the glass.

“Warm,” he murmurs. “And growing stronger; healing.”

The crystal has begun to sprout branches of itself, and Thim smiles; maybe soon it will be strong enough to take him off this planet. Back home, or to a planet that lives, a planet with others on it…

Rain patters down softly, tinkling against the glass, and Thim turns to throw a tarp over the pipes; water will ruin the crystal’s healing process. He covers the pipe connecting the crystal to the generator, and the generator to the cube; they’re fragile, and some even have exposed wires, and the rain pouring down will destroy his only power source.

He goes back to his cube as thunder crashes, and Thim accepts the fact that he’s lonely; spending several decades on this barren planet, alone, no companionship or hope…

He eats dinner alone in the quiet drone of his home, he spends the rest of the evening running diagnostics on the mechanics, and when he finally does go to sleep he does so alone. His bed is large, round and plush, and empty. The walls echo silence, and the air is sterilized and cool.

He doesn’t dream, and when he awakes he prepares for his day; he eats some canned fruit atop a slice of bread, savoring the moldy taste. Humans used to avoid it, for it brought sickness, but it’s tasty to Thim and he chews slowly. He washes the meal down with more kale juice.

The cube chimes as he pulls out a pair of skinny jeans and a loose tshirt, and he lets the noise rattle in his bones; _the weather is_ _cold_ is what the cube reports, so he takes a pullover too. He steps outside, lets the cube morph back into emptiness inside, and goes to assess the pile of metal to the side of his compound.

He should try and build a new karby engine for when he can leave this place, and maybe consider building a smaller cube for transport through the stars; his home cube was designed for a long stay and definitely isn’t equipped for space travel.

The skies are still dark, the water still far receded and lapping loudly at the rocky ground; Thim spends the day planning a travel cube, taking sheets of metal and seeing how they fit together. He eats more canned food, continues to work on the metal pile, and smiles at a cat that comes too close to the force field; the field doesn’t do anything to the creature, merrily recognizing it as something not allowed entrance and solidifying to keep it out, but the cat is inquisitive and a reprieve from the loneliness on this beach.

Thim lets it stroll around the perimeter, watches it scratch at a gaunt crab, offers a smile when it sits and watches him; watches it until it disappears over the sand dunes, muddy and gray and littered with waste. He takes a moment to wonder what the cat’s life must be like, if she’s got any kittens or if she’s alone like Thim is; he resists the urge to run after her, to bring her inside of his territory, to share the burden of this emptiness…

He eats dinner in the soft light of his cube, surrounded by sterile walls, and he sleeps sprawled on his empty bed; he dreams, of memories or hopes, of other _Ravians_. Wings spread wide, soaring upon clean air, against a crisp blue sky, calling out to each other as they swoop and sing…

The cube chimes a wake up call, tingling across his bones; _it is late_ , it calls, _you must awaken_. Thim doesn’t sleep in often, so he awakes blearily to the feeling of the cube; he eats little for the first meal of the day, and dutifully sets back to work on forming a travel cube. The karby crystal is still healing, slow, and there seems to be no storm on the horizon though the sun is still elusive.

So goes Thim’s days; monotonous, quietly, uneventful… He’s lost track at this point for how long he’s been here, and at this point it just seems pointless to count. So he doesn’t.

He sleeps, he eats, he works; at one point, he takes a walk along the beach and dips his toes in the water. A change in his days…

He needs more supplies, so he packs on an exceptionally stormy day and sets out for the town; his bag is slung over his shoulders, empty save for a strip of bandages and some small necessities to hold him for the night. In the case he runs into issues or can’t make it back home, he’ll need to hunker down somewhere safe; the road is fairly empty. A few birds, a few four legged beasts, cross his path but his journey is quiet; a wind kicks up, lightning flashing across the darkened clouds.

Thim checks for traps once more before entering a new store; a drug store, for bandages and other medicinal needs, and then Thim will make a stop at the grocery store. He’ll scavenge for more food stuffs, then travel back to his home cube; he’ll tend to the karby crystal, then spend a few hours organizing and reorganizing the inside of his cube. He might even go so far as to reprogram the interior design; he’ll fall asleep only to awake the next morning and set to work trying to piece together a travel cube.

He might even be reckless and attempt to wire a galaxy reaching radio to contact… Someone; anyone. _Ravian_ or not, he doesn’t think it matters anymore.

The day seems to have other plans though, considering the skies are rumbling with the oncoming storm and the drug store offers him little in the way of supplies; it’s already been scavenged to near emptiness from the humans that survived for a time. Thim knows medication would have been considered highly important during the final days, and he can’t fault them; he tucks what few pill bottles are left, the couple packs of bandages, in his pack and steps out.

The clouds have begun to open up, rain pattering on the cracked tarmac, and Thim turns his face upwards; raindrops pepper his face and roll down to his shirt collar. He breathes the mucky air, deep into his lungs, and lets it out; he wipes the water from his eyes and steps across the road.

The shaking ground beneath him causes him pause, and the following cacophony of crackling electricity in the sky sets shivers along Thim’s body; he turns to the lightning storm, watches it writhe against each other, and the resounding crash that accompanies the suddenly bright flash causes Thim to flinch away.

He covers his face and stumbles away, vision returning in time to see an oval shape careening towards the beach; a… A ship? A ship! The noise and blinding light had been the ship breaking into the atmosphere, the _Ravian_ reasons. Thim breaks into a run, despite the still shaking ground and the still roaring sky; he runs like he’s never run before. Legs pumping, lungs heaving, eyes riveted on the oval’s descent.

It’s tempting to slip out of this disguise, into his long legged avian form, but he’s too focused to go through with that; the lightning from the sky ladders down in an intricate pattern following the oval, as if gently lowering the ship to the ground below. It’s a powerful halo against the stormy sky, lighting up the ground below, the hope this ship brings… Thim’s eyes reflect the light, wide as he runs, and he reaches the road just upon the hill leading to the beach.

Over the sand dunes, Thim watches the oval sink to the ground; the lightning flashes again with another rousing boom, cementing the ship’s final arrival, and Thim slips over the sand in his blind run. His backpack falls to the ground in exchange for his focus on running. The ground around the oval—a translucent pearly silver—has been burnt black by the lightning, and Thim stumbles to a stop at the edge of the circle.

The storm has cleared of the violent thunder and lightning, leaving the soft pattering of rain, and the oval pulses ever so gently once, twice… A hum, a gentle glow, a silhouette in the pearly ship; Thim breathes. There’s a…there’s a person in there, a being, another other-worlder like Thim…

The oval gives one last pulse before exploding in a cascade of water; Thim stumbles out of the way, just barely avoiding getting his sneakers wetter than they already are, and watches in awe as the curled being is left lying on the sandy beach. It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t move, and Thim has a sinking feeling it might actually be dead.

A handful of bumbling steps brings Thim to stand over the reptilian other-worlder; it sports greyish green skin speckled with black, heavier freckles upon the shoulders and collar. The body is androgynous, as far as Thim can tell, similar to _Ravians_ , with a flattened chest and non-descript nether regions; the hands are humanoid, however webbed with pointed black nails, and the feet are squared with three toes that are also webbed.

Thim stands looming for a moment, staring wide eyed at the new comer, heaving breaths; a quiet roll of thunder brings Thim from his shocked hope, and he hurries forward to touch the cold body. The other-worlder doesn’t react, only laying in the fetal position, not breathing; there’s no pulse either, cold and still. Thim refuses to believe the new comer is dead.

He works quickly, carrying and dragging the other-worlder back to his home cube; the rain is pattering steadily, and by the time Thim has them both settled inside the cube, having programmed the force field to allow the other-worlder in, the sky has gone dark. The night has come, it would seem, and Thim settles hesitantly in the free space on the bed. He’s laid the other-worlder on his bed, nearly in the center.

Thim’s eyes stay riveted on his new companion throughout the night; he hasn’t even bothered to change out of his damp clothes; he realizes a few hours further in the night that he’d left his backpack on the beach next to the scorch mark. He shivers when a rain droplet runs down his back, and the cube hums as it raises the temperature; that’s probably a good thing, considering the reptilian was chilled too.

At a point, he dozes off; having shifted into a curled position, he sleeps deeply. So deeply, he doesn’t know when the other-worlder awakes with a gasp through their flattened, open nostrils; their eyes open, wide, round, and vacantly colored. They sit up on the circular bed stiffly, glance around their surroundings, and blink a pair of translucent lids over their eyes; in an instance, the unfamiliarity registers and the reptilian clamors to stand. They whirl around, taking in every detail of their surroundings, stumbling to a stop when they spot Thim on the bed they’d just been laying on.

Air whistles through their nose; they step minutely closer, then take a braver step forward. They stand over the curled humanoid and watch him breathe; deeply in, relaxing out… The reptilian’s hands curl into fists the longer they stand there; frustration, fear, uncertainty…

But the cube recognizes it as an aggressive show, however, and soon klaxons a warning deep in the pit of Thim’s stomach; gasping awake, the other-worlder comes into focus. Standing tall, feet planted, agape looking down at him. Thim stares back, also gaping, and the cube shrills another warning in his gut.

“You’re safe,” Thim begins; slowly, lowly, calmly. Soothingly… “You’re on Earth; you made it to Earth.”

“Nod noomko uo orti.”

His words get stuck in his throat as he tries to make sense of the strange words; they’re a rumbling hiss from the other-worlder, and Thim shakes his head. “Ok, alright; I don’t understand you.”

The other-worlder blinks; once, then twice. “Nod noet reir. Loor atoid.”

He shakes his head again. “I-I don’t…”

Their whole countenance changes; from stiff, to a sudden relaxation. “Sleisso hyum,” they hum, before bending and reaching out for Thim.

Thim shies away, and the cube pulses urgently; if he wanted to, Thim could probably toss the reptilian half way across the room, but he doesn’t want to. He’s a pacifist first and foremost, and he doesn’t want the only living being he’s met to despise him. The reptilian halts their movements, blinks, speaks again; the same phrase.

“Sleisso hyum.” They reach out once more, and Thim stays still; the barest brush of fingertips against the skin of his brow sends a blanketing cold across his mind. Far reaching, not terrifying or threatening, but refreshing; it’s still there, even as the other-worlder pulls away. Blue veins light up under their skin, traveling from their fingertips up their arm, fading as it goes. They flex their hand before turning their gaze to Thim’s hazy eyes.

Thim is still floating in the chilled mindscape his new friend provided him with, slowly returning to the cubed home, and the reptilian shifts to catch his hazy gaze.

“My name,” they speak, the strange words only slightly stuttered on their forked tongue. “is Jazin; and you are not from Earth.”

Thim gives a questioning look.

“I learned two languages connecting with you; this one, and siis iy vo.”

 _Ravish_ ; he knows he’s heard it before, but he can’t remember when. It almost makes him want to cry, hearing it again. “Y-you’re right; I’m from _Rav_.”

Jazin twists their hand and admires the movements. “I am from _Wreet_. I was sent here to terraform and establish a colony.” They turn their gaze on Thim. “I assume you were too.”

“I… In a way, yes.”

They assess each other and breathe steadily; breathe the same air, stand in the same enclosure, live in the same moment. Thim hopes this isn’t a dream, and Jazin gives a toothy smile.

After their introductions, Jazin expresses preference to masculine pronouns almost immediately; he explains that the _Wreeteps_ are all monomorphic as he is, and certain ones express preference for a set of pronouns over another. Thim explains the biology of _Ravians_ appearing androgynous yet having assigned genders.

“Sounds barbaric,” Jazin mutters around an ice cube melting on his tongue, and Thim laughs.

They, surprisingly, get along well; for their first introduction being so startling, they quip easily and rest late into the following day. The bed is large enough to house them both comfortably, and neither one has any issues sharing. The following day they spend inside; Thim has no reason to go out, not with his new found company, and Jazin doesn’t seem too eager to leave either.

“The _Ravians_ beat me to colonizing this world. Hm?”

Thim looks up from the circuit board he’s been tinkering with. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Oh?”

He fiddles with a wire, detaches it and plugs it in elsewhere. “You don’t know, I guess; um… You should come outside.” He waves Jazin towards the front of the cube, and the wall melts away; Thim steps just outside the doorway, and purposefully doesn’t look at Jazin.

The _Wreetep_ takes a moment; he glances around the rocky, barren beach. He gazes out to the city beyond the sand dunes, windows blown out, silent, motionless. “You are the only one. There is no one here.”

“The _Ravian_ leaders sent scouts to various places in the galaxy when our planet began to die; I was sent here, with the ability to blend in as one of them, to see if it was a hospitable place for my kind.”

“And when you arrived…” Jazin turns his gaze to his companion. “The war had destroyed everything.”

Thim turns back inside, and Jazin follows with one last glance out to the world; Thim speaks quietly as he returns to the circuit board. “It was the end of the war; planets destroyed, species dying out. Earth wasn’t any different; there were some survivors left when I arrived. But that was eons ago; they’re gone now.”

The rest of the night goes quietly; Thim fiddles with his project, Jazin stares at a spot on the wall; he crunches ice, because _Wreeteps_ like cold food. Thim will need to stock up on ice cream, though it’s probably all melted and rotten by now.

“What’s your dietary restrictions, Jazin?”

He thinks for a moment. “Meat; what about _Ravians_?”

Thim goes to the cupboards to make dinner. “Certain earthly fruits; grapes, avocado…”

“Avocado?”

Thim smiles, stretching for a knife to open the can of olives in his hands. “We’ll have to get some when we go on a supply run next.”

He holds his breath; it’s an assumption that they’ll have a future. That Jazin will stay; he’s not like Thim, and his ship obviously didn’t run on a karby crystal.

“If…you’re staying, that is…”

“You would be alone then.”

Thim turns; Jazin is flicking chips of ice across the tabletop, pointed chin resting on his hand. He looks serene.

“Seems lonely to stay here without company.”

So Jazin stays; they form a routine, and the skies clear. Colors are vibrant, even the sandy gray of the beach is comforting. The cube, always having been empty, now feels full but neither minds; they dance around each other at meal times, Thim ducking Jazin’s arm to stir a pot and Jazin darting to set the table all against the backdrop of a shrill _Ravian_ musical record.

Thim holds his hand out for a soldering tool, and Jazin is there to hand it over; a lollipop stick hangs from his mouth, and a book is held against his knee, and Thim fiddles with the design for his travel cube. As much as he’s happy to have company, he wants home.

He plucks the screwdriver up from where he put it down, twisting a screw into place against a metal sheet. “Jazin?”

“Hum?” The sucker clacks against his teeth, and he barely glances up from the book in his lap.

“Do you have anyone to go home to?”

There’s a pause; slowly, Jazin closes the book and pulls the lollipop out of his mouth. He runs his tongue over his teeth to savor the flavor. “We are not like your kind; at least, I do not think we are. You have parental figures, yes?”

Thim doesn’t remember them, or at least not clearly, and Thim doesn’t miss them terribly. “We do, yes; do the _Wreeteps_ not?”

“Our generations are created by splicing the shell of the previous generations. We are reptilian, and if ever damaged we fortify ourselves inside our egg. With a powerful enough charge, hatching occurs.” He speaks so technically, and Thim believes that must be what the _Wreetep_ society is like; science and technology and so very sterile, nigh emotionless even with Jazin’s pointy smile and large expressive eyes. “Eventually, the shells wear out and can no longer survive another hatch—that, or the _Wreetep_ requests a descendent. A chip of the shell is utilized to create new life, genetically enhanced from the previous generation and in preparation for the job that particular _Wreetep_ will be placed in.”

A pause follows his explanation and he returns to his book; under the dusty sun, his greyish skin seems to be translucent. Thim thinks he catches glimpses of bright blue veins or dark black bones, but then the moment passes.

“Your society sounds very advanced.”

“I suppose we might be considered so. Our society is based heavily upon our form of genetic science.”

“So,” Thim begins. “Does that mean you don’t have parents?”

“We do not have parents in the traditional sense; we hatch from eggs, formed from pieces of the previous generations shell, and are artificially incubated. We are raised in classrooms by teachers and guides; I am descended from a mighty warrior, a legend among my people, and I was modified to survive decades of travel and various different atmospheres.”

“Wow! That’s impressive.” Thim sets his project aside to focus fully on Jazin. “Wait, so if you can regenerate how many lives have you lived?”

Jazin touches the sucker to his lips, flickers his tongue to taste it, and opens his book again; as casual as can be. “This is my first hatching.”

He doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, but he did ask the question so he nods. “That’s cool…”

The smirk is clear in his voice when he speaks next. “Even though it is my first hatching, I am considered a ‘young adult’ in my culture; what of you?”

Thim twists two wires together, fumbles for the soldering tool again, and Jazin casually plucks it from the gravel and hands it over. “I suppose I’d be considered a ‘young adult’, too; while you guys regenerate—or rehatch?—we have long lifetimes. And while we have parents, we aren’t strong bonded; we’re related, they’ve taught me to shift and fly and placed me in the military branch, but… There’s not an incredibly deep relationship; it’s a mentorship, but even then as a society the _Ravians_ don’t form emotional bonds.”

A pause; waves lap at the beach, a cat trots quietly up the ways, and a three legged dog noses through a pile of trash. Thim moves from the plate of metal and circuitry to piece together a few other sheets. Jazin hasn’t read a line in a while, and eventually he closes it and regards the sweet in his hand.

“So you do not feel love?”

His mouth opens, then clicks shut; does he feel love? “I’ve never considered it before…”

Jazin returns to his book and the lollipop. “You should.”

Thim flips the question back on him. “Do _you_ feel love?” Neither society seems to be built on love, though the _Ravians_ have family relations.

He looks out to the open water, tips his head up at the sky, and sucks on the lollipop stick. “I do not know.”

They lapse into silence, however comfortable it is, and so the day goes in a lazy manner; dinner is uneventful, another _Ravian_ song echoing in the chamber accompanied by high chirps and low clicks from Jazin, and Thim watches his lips move delicately around those sharp teeth to make those sounds.

He turns around with a blush when he’s caught staring. “So, uh… Hm, we’re going to need to do a supply run tomorrow; or uh…I can go alone, if you want, or…”

Jazin laughs; it’s a tinkling sound, like a xylophone, light… “Shall we go together? I would like to see this world, even if it is empty.”

They scrape fruit out of cans, crunch through a sleeve of stale crackers, and while Thim sips curdled milk Jazin swallows a simple glass of water; he stretches out over the bed, and Thim curls on his side. Neither one uses the blanket, the cube keeps the air comfortable, and so they drift off peacefully.

The following day, a bag slung over Thim’s shoulders, they set out for a resupply run; Jazin had refused any clothing or shoes for his feet, and he marches through the wrecked streets as if it’s a walkway fit for royalty. He’s made of sharp angles and disturbing imagery, but Thim thinks—in another life—Jazin could have been royalty…

“Is this planet hospitable for your kind?” Jazin has stopped walking, turning his head upwards; eyes closed, he breathes in the cooling air. The seasons are changing, the atmosphere growing extra colder; the storms will come soon, and they need to prepare.

“With extensive terraforming, sure; the war damaged this world. There’s toxic waste…” He gives a nondescript shrug. “Destruction to be cleared. It’s rotted for so long, I don’t know if it’s salvageable.”

Another breath, and Jazin steps delicately over a large piece of brick in their way. “Or if any of your kind are even still alive, yes?”

Thim doesn’t answer, and Jazin nods sagely; they walk in silence. Thim leads the way to a new store, one he hasn’t yet raided, and he stops Jazin before he can enter.

“You have to watch for traps.” Thim kneels, looking for a wire strung across the door way or a laser awaiting entrance, any motion detectors or detonators. “The humans used these in their final years to keep others from their stores; food can be hard to find.” There’s a thing wire pressed low to the ground, and Thim follows it. He disarms the trap, showing Jazin the finer points of this particular tripwire, and when he’s done he packs the spare parts in his bag.

This is a large superstore; it houses food and non-necessities. Frivolities the humans found entertaining, games and pillows and etched blankets and candles; Thim goes for the produce immediately. He picks bugs from the fruit, adds it to his bag; Jazin moves slower than Thim, taking in the darkened surroundings.

“Can you see?”

He blinks lazily, peering owlishly at Thim. “You ask if I have night vision. Yes.”

Thim grins, moving away from the empty apple stand to the smell of rotten meat. “Cool!”

Jazin isn’t much help in finding food, but Thim doesn’t mind; he even finds himself getting distracted, but not by the surroundings as Jazin is. He’s distracted by how the tips of Jazin’s fingers brush the floating dust; how his eyes roll to the ceiling, travel to the right of the room to read a sign, wander down an aisle curiously.

But he has to turn away; they need provisions, and Thim pulls a box of something called cereal, eyes a bag of rice.

“What is this?” Jazin has stepped aside, further into the darkness, and Thim steps towards him as if to stop him.

An aborted breath… Jazin has kept walking into the darkness, a silhouette in the black, and Thim fills his lungs to follow; one foot forward, he enters the darkness. It doesn’t stay that way for long though, because Jazin glows blue; it start’s slowly, at the base of his skull, in little rivets that travel along his shoulder blades and down his arms to his fingertips.

It’s a gentle blue glow, soft to the eyes but enough to light up the room, and Thim’s grateful for that large breath he took earlier because there’s no air now; it’s not that the atmosphere has disappeared, but Jazin is breathtaking. He runs his fingers over the only shelves that are nigh fully stocked, the light moving with him; alive, beautiful…

It’s toys, oddly enough, that have caught Jazin’s attention; Thim’s never explored the unnecessary parts of these stores, but Jazin is transfixed. He admires the bright colors, the little dolls in plastic cases under a layer of dust, and he pulls a small box down from the shelf.

“Chess.” The word is slow over his tongue, the Terran language still unfamiliar in his reptilian mouth. “Have you ever played chess before, Thim?”

“Uh…no…”

Jazin hums softly, continues down the aisle, and Thim—mesmerized—follows along; Jazin pulls another small box from the shelf.

“Card; have you ever played a game of cards before?”

Thim shakes his head, and Jazin tucks it under his arm with the chessboard; they walk like that for a while, Jazin adding other little novelties to his pile, and Thim… Thim enjoys this moment? Yes…enjoyment; he’s feeling a swell in his chest, a pounding of happiness he doesn’t remember having before.

“We should probably return to our actual goal.” Jazin sheepishly glances away.

Thim blinks; there’s light behind Jazin, gray and dull compared to the subtle blue under Jazin’s skin, and the moment is over. Fleeting, the beauty of that moment drifts away and Thim grips onto the memory as tight as possible.

They do return to their scavenging, the light fading from Jazin’s skin, and Thim tucks his finds away in the satchel; more food is added to the pile, paper towels, a spare blanket or two. They’re beginning on the pharmacy section, where it’s been nearly completely emptied; but it’s still important to have medical supplies on hand, so Thim reaches for a half box of adhesive bandages. Giving them a shake to judge how many are left, he adds them to his bag. He fiddles through a few bottles still on the shelf for anything important.

“What is that building?” Jazin nods out the window; still clutched in his hands is the box of cards. “The one with orange lettering.”

“A hardware store; it’s for tools and stuff. Not incredibly useful, but I’ve checked it out before; it’s helped when I’m working on the travel cube.” Thim stuffs a pack of napkins in his bag. “Tools, spare parts…”

It’s only then he realizes Jazin isn’t listening, blowing away like a bag on the wind; he floats to the entrance— _“Ja-Jazin!”_ —where his attention is drawn, and the bottles clatter on the shelf as Thim scrambles after his companion.

“Jazin!” Thim glances around the street, trotting after Jazin in the warm sunlight. “Jazin, where are you going?”

“Have you ever done anything for fun?” Jazin admires the fading paint on the building; as if it’s a masterpiece, as if it holds secrets or beauty. “Beyond to survive or reach a goal? Have you ever done anything for pure enjoyment?”

He goes to answer, clicks his jaw shut… He can’t remember.

Jazin grins and, once more, leads the way into a darkened store; the floor here is cement, cracked, and the tools are useless. He seems to have a goal in mind as he wanders about, and Thim is content enough to watch the light shift under Jazin’s skin as he moves.

They’ve moved past the planks of rotting wood, past an abandoned drill, and suddenly Jazin turns to the left; he stops there, and Thim glances around his bulk. Lights; a chandelier from the ceiling, soft jewels and bright gold—delicate wall fixtures, table lamps with fancy twists in the base—there are some sillier lights too, strings of colorful bulbs, fairy lights along one side, a cat face…

“Let go, Thim; have fun. You are so driven sometimes you miss the beauty.” Jazin trails his hands along the dusty shelving; elegance in his movements like the chandelier above, he grips an exposed wire, closes his eyes, and glows brighter. Blue, low and beautiful; Thim doesn’t miss it.

The energy travels along the wires drawing Thim’s attention; he follows it as it touches every light. They glow, each one unique and fanciful, each one beautiful and inimitable… The fairy lights twinkle, the chandelier shines ever so bright, the wall fixtures glowing and then dulling, glowing and dulling.

“Energy,” Jazin murmurs. “It is a part of us—the _Wreeteps_. It…runs in our veins.”

Thim glances away from the lights to his companion; the flickering reflects in Jazin’s wide eyes, and his lips are pulled back in a soft smile. Does beauty run in their veins, or just Jazin? The light dances across his skin and for once earth doesn’t seem destitute; it’s magical, maybe always has been and Thim just didn’t bother to notice.

Time passes; an ashy winter sets in, and Thim doesn’t have to work through boredom for once. Jazin helps him secure tarps over the delicate outside machinery before the dirty snow falls, and they are chased inside when the suffocating storms come; the cube chimes alerts, and Jazin hums in the quiet.

The chessboard Jazin picked up during one of their supply runs is pulled out, and they only play one game of checkers—they only made it halfway through a chess game before Jazin won by naming his king Lord Waffle and causing Thim to dissolve into uncontrollable laughter—before making their own forms of games; at one point, Jazin stacks the pieces into an intricate castle, directing the chess pieces as if it’s a play.

Thim sips a soda as Jazin expertly voices each character with unique pitches; a crazy play of humor and nonsense, but entertaining all the same, and it ends climatically with Jazin tossing the pieces off the table as the queen shrieks out a song about bedbugs. Thim laughs and Jazin collapses in giggles, splotches of green on his cheek—a _Wreetep_ blushing is cute, juxtaposing their sharpened teeth, their almost sickly skin, their webbing and gigantically scary eyes. Thim glances away.

They sleep closer than before as wind howls outside and Jazin asks what the echoing beat against the cube is.

“The storm,” Thim answers; his voice is low in the darkness, and Jazin shifts closer until his breath brushes over Thim’s skin. “It’s strong and blows rocks around.”

Winter passes; they play card games, Thim works on the circuit boards some more, Jazin asks more about _Rav_. Thim answers, and asks after the _Wreeteps_ and their mechanical world; Jazin spins tales in scientific jargon and Thim listens intently.

When the storms die down, the air oxidizes again, and the earth settles, the cube chimes merrily; Thim steps out first, Jazin on his heels. The tarps are covered in a heavy layer of dust and gravel which they readily set out to clear; Jazin hefts larger debris out of Thim’s way, and Thim pulls the tarps off the machinery, checking for any damage.

He presses a hand to the karby crystal; it thrums gently, slightly bigger than the last time Thim had seen it. “Still healing,” he murmurs. No more damaged for the storms, but still not ready for travel.

“Healing?” Jazin asks from across the way, and Thim smiles.

“Yeah, it’s looking good.” Thim continues to tinker with the crystal; Jazin folds a few more tarps, sets them aside.

“You can leave soon.”

Though the crystal has grown bigger, more branches forming, and it gives off a strong energy… Thim doesn’t think he can leave soon; for one, the travel cube isn’t even near completion yet and the crystal still needs to heal more.

“There’s still a while to go on the cube, and the crystal isn’t fully healed yet; to attempt travel with a partially healed crystal… It’d either end in an explosion or only travelling halfway to our destination.”

“ _Your_ destination.”

Oh; yes. It hadn’t occurred to Thim that Jazin wouldn’t go to _Rav_ with him. Jazin’s hardly ever mentioned his home planet, or family, or any want to return; Thim had only assumed…

That they’d be together forever.

“Oh, uh… Yeah…” he pokes the gravel by his feet. “When will you return home?” And how? There’s nothing left of Jazin’s ship.

“I have no plans to.” At Thim’s questioning glance, Jazin shrugs; it’s stiff and he doesn’t meet Thim’s eyes. His speech, for the first time since Thim has met him, is stinted. “When I left, there were three other _Wreeteps_ ; we set out in different directions of the universe and we knew we would not be returning. Our planet had given its last energy in my creation, and as such we have no future.”

They thrive on energy, and without their home to supply that need… They had left to die out in peace in whatever paradise they could find; his flitty nature seems less angelic now. Desperate to live every second, to explore every nook, to enjoy every happiness before it’s too late…

“You could come to _Rav_.” _With me_. “It might be dying, but it’s still habitable.”

Jazin doesn’t say anything for a moment; he offers a thin smile, and Thim returns it a little stronger.

“I mean it, Jazin; you can come with me. We’d be happy to accept you.”

Jazin looks up to the sky. “I appreciate the offer, however… This is the planet I landed on; this is my planet.”

 _And me_ , Thim wants to ask. _Please tell me I mean something to you; like you mean to me._

Jazin goes for supplies a while later; Thim watches him exit the forcefield, arms crossed unsuredly.

“Be careful,” Thim calls. “And you should come back before sunset! There tend to be after storms; they can be pretty nasty.”

Jazin gives a toothy smile; he waves and steps over the debris and gravel, heading for the city. Thim feels a small smile tug at his lips, and he waits until Jazin is out of sight before turning back to his work.

He spends some time checking over the karby crystal for a while longer; it pulses every gently, and the home cube chimes happily. Thim moves away from the crystal to the pile of parts for his travel cube; he’s made good progress since Jazin has arrived. The travel cube is nearly complete, despite the inner workings; the cube itself is complete, and the charging dock is ready.

He just needs to put the finishing touches on the karby engine, a far cry from the engine in the home cube but still usable; he fiddles with that as the sun moves across the sky. Time moves on, he fits the engine near the charging dock, screws it in place, and considers giving it a test run; it’s especially important for him to test the travel cube so he doesn’t get blown up on take off or left drifting through space. Still, he can’t actively move the cube without any other wiring, so he picks up a circuit board.

The earth shakes; there’s a rocking beneath his feet that sends him to the ground, and the home cube scrapes against his skull. A warning, an explosion, the blinding light fading away from the city. A fire? No, not a fire. The hair burns against his skin, standing upright before turning to ash, and his body tingles; energy, Thim gapes, and then he’s running.

Jazin was out there; Thim feels his bones shifting, even as the cube still scrapes his brains. Wings sprout from his back and grow lengthy, his arms elongating too as his legs transform into taloned beasts, and his nose changes shape into a rounded beak form, lips pursing to compliment; he is a _Ravian_ and though his wings are disused they don’t fail him. He’s soaring through the city, fingertips just grazing brick and mortar as he swoops and dives in search of his companion.

He traces the location of the explosion to the food store they’d found the games in; there’s a sharp tang in the air, the taste of crackling electricity, and Thim’s landing kicks up clouds of dust. His wings fold against his back and twitch as he steps ever delicately over the glass; the front windows have been blown out, and across the street a dog cowers in fear before trotting away quickly.

Thim steps through the destroyed entryway, following the suffocating sparks to the canned foods aisle; there are more shards here, scattered in a central location near the shelves, and…

They’re not shards but eggshells; breathlessly, Thim chokes out one name.

“Jazin.”

Jazin is dead; reverted to his egg state, he’d shattered with the energy surge.

He glances quickly to the shelf, assesses what sort of trap it was—an electrical trap, attached to a can of peaches that not even Thim would have noticed—and he kneels on the floor, careful with the cracked shells; his wings spread out to cover the mess, and he hurries to scoop every piece he can find.

_They are made of energy and they can die from it too._

“You can’t leave me.” He marches for the exit, shell cradled against his stomach. “You won’t.”

He has energy; he has an energy source. He’s smart and resourceful and he can bring Jazin back; he has to.

Outside he takes flight again; his wings, every so brightly colored with yellow and pink, flap insistently and he’s winded by the time he returns to base. Carefully, he places the broken shell in a safe place and pulls the travel cube closer to the crystal.

The home cube gives a shrill chirp along Thim’s right arm, a question and a comfort, and then another chirp down his left arm and Thim shrugs it off; no, Jazin is not dead. Yes, he is detaching the karby crystal from the home cube and attaching it to the travel cube.

He settles the shells in the small ship, tapping against a screen to power it up.

“You will come back,” he orders; touching the crystal’s container, he tries to infuse it with the necessary power to save him—save Jazin, save Thim.

The crystal powers up with a sound Thim’s never heard before; a high pitched hum as the pink travels from the crystal, down the cube, and into the ship. It pulses energy out, and Thim’s feathers shiver; he kneels before the tiny travel cube, half reaching to cradle it, hoping against hope that it will be enough.

However, the process drags on and on; the crystal hums louder until it’s shrieking, the home cube warbles disjointed warnings of system failure, and Thim breaks.

“You’re my planet!” He shrieks; curled over his knees, he sobs. “My gravity and air!” Beating a fist into the ground, he screams. “You have to come back!”

The crystal gives one last giant pulse before shattering; Thim falls silent. The air crackles, his feathers ruffle, eyes pinning; the crystal has shattered from its hallowed container, little white flecks scattered along the gravel ground. The home cube has gone gray, the forcefield fuzzing out to nothing, leaving everything exposed.

The travel cube where he’d laid Jazin has filled with fog, or smoke, grey and black curling and whirling like Thim’s stomach. There is no movement.

A shard of pink catches his eyes; some part of the karby crystal still lives, however small… Thim drags it closer, sobbing anew, cradles it so close; it’ll grow. It’ll grow again; he can try again. He will try again; he will wait for the crystal to grow larger, more powerful, and then he will try again.

Because he cannot live without Jazin. A life without Jazin is a life without life, without air, without love.

Love. “I can’t lose you; I…I love you,” he chokes out.

The waves lap at the shore; Thim sits alone before the travel cube. A cat trots along the sand dunes, pauses to observe his grief, and then passes on its way; clouds build up and obscure the sun, thunder rumbles…

A webbed hand slaps against the cube’s glass, and Thim raises his head with a gasp of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> FOUR FUCKING MONTHS OF WORK *insert its_been_84_years.gif*
> 
>  
> 
> [Muse Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoLAinUZ-O96DKr7rTFaGaRWRQQg7cscY)


End file.
